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Funerals and birthdays - June 2024

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I will be glad when June 2024 is over, I am sitting here on June 29th 2024 and I am physically and mentally exhausted from the events of this month.  At the very end of May my Uncle Stan died, he was 83 and prior to his death he was a relatively healthy old man, but a fall and brain bleed and possibly poor care at the Sunderland Royal Hospital led to him fading away pretty quickly, admitted on Friday May 24th and died overnight on May 26th. He was an incredibly kind, funny man and we had a very odd relationship as he would always claim I know everything I know because of him, it was a running joke since my teens and I tried to send him a postcard from wherever I visited in the world as I knew as a former coal miner and shipyard worker, he had never left England and I know he appreciated my postcards.  His funeral was the first I've attended as an adult and it felt odd, being a grown-up can be hard, I comforted my aunt and my mum and had to navigate the usual family politics of a bi
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Land of the rising sun and the chicken katsu

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I recently spent 11 days in Japan and this is a compilation of my thoughts over those 11 days. Days 1 and 2 So my first question about Japan is why is it the land of the rising sun, why does Japan have the monopoly on rising suns? It rises everywhere right? So my arrival into the city centre could have been better, I took the express Metro line not the local and ended up in NoIdeaWhereIamI aka Nihonbashi and had to go back on my self and the exit that google maps said I needed didn't exist so I wandered around Ginza trying to find my hotel and find road signs (they are impossible to see). So after landing at Haneda at 520pm, I got to my hotel at 8pm. Room is lovely but small and was once a smoking room so it smells like my grandad's house, on the upside, I am 5 minutes walk from the largest Uniqlo store in the world and the hotel has an amazing breakfast buffet, fish for breakfast indeed! Ginza is the area with all the posh shops, streets and streets of it, the S
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A smalltown boy

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I am sitting in a coffee shop (a Costa drive thru) that was not here a year ago, everything in my home town seems to change and also seems to remain the same, it seems to have a lot of drive-thru cafes etc. which seems very American in a poor tribute to suburban USA.  I have not lived here properly since 1988 with a small period spent here from June 1992 to August 1993 then never came back. So here I sit, trying to work between looking after my dad who had knee replacement surgery on Monday (it is now Friday). He is improving but I never know how real carers cope, it is hard on everyone. My dad has not reacted well to being helped, especially relating to bathroom things. I think it is tough on a 78 year old man to have his wife and his son helping him in the bathroom, I know I didn't enjoy it.  The experience of seeing your father as a frail person is tough, it seems to erase the memories of childhood, memories of him carrying you, swimming etc. Another thing about caring for paren
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Location: Sunderland, UK
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It has been a long long time - Boston and New York 2022

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I am sitting in a coffee shop in the South End of Boston (Tremont Street), about 2 minutes’ walk from my old apartment on Worcester Square. I lived here for almost 2 years from November 2000 and have some good memories. I have not been back for 16 years.  A lot has changed, a lot has not. The ride to the hotel was much the same although main roads in Boston are almost all underground so you don't see daylight for quite some time and there is nothing fun about sitting in a traffic jam for 30 minutes underground.   I am staying in the Beacon Hill area of the city and it is a cute mix of Victorian era town houses and cobbled streets bookended by the government district and the massive Massachusetts General Hospital. I was supposed to be here with a friend who lives in Quebec but due to him being forgetful etc. he forgot the document he needed to enter the USA so I am now doing this 5 day, 4 night trip on my own, not a total disaster but a very different holiday dynamic.  Last night
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My 9/11 Memory

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I was so excited to be working in the USA, I had been with Orange since March 2000 and my boss had asked me if I wanted to work in the Boston office for a few weeks to help the recently acquired US team to integrate into the British team I was considered the most social etc. I accepted thinking I'd be there a month and how exciting that was. I was there most of August 2000 and it was then decided I should be based there a few more months so in November 2000 I packed up all my belongings, some went into storage and off I headed to Boston in BA Business class (another thrill for me).  It was SO cold; I remember thinking it was a lot colder than I had experienced in the Northeast of England and the snow on some days was up to my waist, but it was exciting. I stayed in a hotel a few days until my apartment was ready, a cute little studio apartment in a brownstone apartment in Boston's South End, a mix of upwardly mobile gays, yuppies and doctors from the nearby Mass General. I lo
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